Replies to post #305976 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[blackhawks]

The Most "Electable" Democrat Is the One Who Supports Policies Americans Want

https://www.gq.com/story/electable-democrats-polling-election


The problem with terms like "more conservative," "more moderate," and even "electable" is that their meanings are hard to pin down.

And most Americans, regardless of partisan preference, are probably at the point where they'd vote for an already-opened jar of Nutella if it meant that jar would lead the country instead of Trump.

………….

Polling policy preferences, however, tells a different story than polling political inclinations. While self-proclaimed centrist Howard Schultz is out here calling a 70 percent marginal tax rate on income over $10 million a "far left" idea, polling data shows more Americans support it than oppose it (45 percent versus 32 percent).

Elizabeth Warren's "wealth tax" on households worth more than $50 million—a concrete proposal to enact such a proposal into law—is even more popular: 61 percent of all voters, 74 percent of Democrats, and even 50 percent of Republicans are in favor. Only 21 percent of people polled oppose it.

What McCaskill misses is that all these terms are relative. At this point, raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans is a centrist, moderate position. So is climate change, about which Americans across the political spectrum are worried by a 2-to-1 margin.

Another poll finds that a majority of Americans support raising the minimum wage. Still another found that 70 percent support Medicare for All. A whopping 80 percent of voters would support something like the Green New Deal. The notion of remaking the American economy over the next ten years is definitely ambitious, but it is not fringe.

Rather than fretting over which political and ideological boxes voters put both candidates and themselves into, a much better and less-maddening strategy seems to be "run on substantive issues, dammit." Figuring out beforehand whether those issues are sufficiently "moderate" or too "liberal" is a ridiculous guessing game that says more about the person guessing than it does about what voters actually want and value